Killer from the sea

By Tim Thwaites in Adelaide

PERPLEXED by the sparsity of plant life immediately surrounding the Great
Barrier Reef, two Queensland biologists may have stumbled on a clutch of new,
natural weedkillers that appear to be harmless to people, animals and crop
plants.

Jim Burnell, a molecular biologist from James Cook University, was out
scuba-diving on the reef, which runs along the coast of Queensland, when it struck him
that the coral was extremely bare in places. “Everything on the reef was
thriving except for free-growing seabed plants,” he told New Scientist.
He and his colleague Lyndon Llewellyn from the Australian …

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